Fringe Benefits

For many years, one of my favorite parts of the Christmas season has been the making (and eating) of many goodies.  Now, it's even better, as the kids are old enough to help.

This year, my goal was to make only goodies the kids could help me make.

Our goodies were simple, but delicious and made good gifts for friends and teachers.

This mischeif maker, supervised from the floor

while we lined up pretzels,

unwrapped Hershey's Kisses,

and did all sorts of other big kid baking tasks.

Grandma Mary & Grandpa Tim came for a few days of Christmas.  While they were here, I finished up some last minute Christmas presents,

while Grandma kept the girls occupied with baking sugar cookie cut-outs.

Even daddy got in on the goodie making action.  On Christmas Eve he helped Xandra and Theia build a graham cracker house while I worked on dinner.

We didn't eat the house

despite the girls' frequent pleadings to the contrary.

They did, however, get to try one piece of each kind of candy that went on the house when the house was complete.  A nice fringe benefit of helping create goodies!

Upon further review, it is now unclear to me how much my kids enjoy helping with the goodie making and how much they just enjoy the fringe benefits.